Salted Pineapple

Ingredients

1 pineapple

2kg rock salt

5 egg whites

1 lemon

2 oranges

for the syrup:

1 lemon

100g sugar

vanilla pod

stick of cinnamon

1 star anise

Method

You are going to make a salt crust, using good quality rock salt. It comes out of the box quite dry, so add moisture to it in the form of lemon juice, lime juice and egg whites, which make everything set much more firmly. And with two kilos of salt, you will need quite a few egg whites.

It's a good messy recipe and using your open hands is the easiest way to mix it all.

When it is thoroughly mixed, spread a layer on a baking tray and lay the pineapple on its side on top of that.

Build the salt up around the pineapple very carefully and leave the spiky top poking out at one side.

It's a delicate operation getting it into the oven, where you let it cook for 90 minutes at 160°C.

For the Syrup:

When you bring the pineapple out, let it rest for an hour, while you make a simple syrup to go with it.

Squeeze the oranges and the lemon and bring the juice to the boil with the sugar and then add the spices, a split vanilla pod, a stick of cinnamon and some start anise.

And that's it: just leave the spices to infuse while the pineapple is still resting. The longer you leave it, the better and it will taste.

Finally, break the salt from the fruit, slice it very finely and serve it with the syrup.

Notes:

Using salt as a crust for food is intended to preserve as perfectly as possible the original flavour of the food. The most usual item given this treatment is a fine fresh fish, but the timings involved are a little too precise for my slightly chaotic dinner parties, so I have decided to give the salty treatment to a fine fresh pineapple instead.